Of the three main CPF accounts, MediSave is the one people usually only think about when they’re already sitting in a hospital admissions office. That’s a bit backwards — understanding how it works before you need it makes the actual moment of using it far less stressful.
What MediSave is for
MediSave is the healthcare-savings component of CPF. It’s a national medical savings scheme, not health insurance in the traditional sense — you’re building up your own account balance over your working life, which you then draw on for approved healthcare costs, rather than pooling premiums with other people the way an insurer would.
Broadly, MediSave can be used for:
- Hospitalisation expenses — the bulk of what MediSave is designed to cover, including approved treatments, surgeries, and certain outpatient procedures.
- MediShield Life premiums — MediShield Life is Singapore’s basic hospitalisation insurance, and MediSave is typically used to pay its premiums.
- Approved outpatient treatments — including certain chronic disease management programmes, day surgery, and other conditions CPF and the Ministry of Health have designated as MediSave-claimable.
- Approved Integrated Shield Plan premiums — for members who’ve bought a private insurer’s enhanced hospitalisation plan on top of MediShield Life, MediSave can typically cover the MediShield Life-equivalent portion of the premium.
It’s worth being precise here: not every medical expense is MediSave-claimable. The list of approved uses is set and periodically updated by the Ministry of Health and CPF Board, so if you’re unsure whether a specific procedure or bill qualifies, check with the hospital’s MediSave counter or CPF directly rather than assuming.
How money gets into your MediSave account
For salaried employees, a portion of your monthly CPF contribution is automatically allocated to MediSave — the exact proportion depends on your age, as CPF’s allocation formula shifts the split across OA, SA/RA, and MA as you get older, generally directing a larger share to MediSave in later years. For the full breakdown of how those percentages work, see our guide to CPF contribution rates.
For self-employed individuals, there’s no employer contribution to piggyback on, but MediSave contributions become compulsory once your net trade income for the year crosses a threshold set by CPF. This is one of the few CPF components where self-employed people don’t get a choice to opt out — the reasoning is that healthcare costs don’t discriminate by employment type, so the government treats MediSave as closer to a mandatory safety net than a discretionary retirement top-up.
You can also make voluntary cash top-ups to your own or a family member’s MediSave account, which may come with tax relief depending on current rules — check IRAS and CPF’s current guidelines for specifics.
The Basic Healthcare Sum — why MediSave has a ceiling
MediSave has a balance ceiling called the Basic Healthcare Sum (BHS). The idea behind it: MediSave is meant to be enough to cover a member’s basic healthcare needs in retirement, not to function as an unlimited savings account.
Conceptually, once your MediSave balance hits the BHS, further mandatory contributions that would otherwise go to MediSave get redirected — typically to your Special Account or Retirement Account instead, depending on your age. You don’t lose the money; it just flows into a different CPF account once the healthcare-specific ceiling is reached, where it keeps earning interest — see how CPF interest rates work for how that’s calculated.
The BHS itself is adjusted periodically (it has historically risen roughly in line with rising healthcare costs and life expectancy), so don’t anchor on a specific dollar figure from an old article — check the CPF Board’s current published BHS for the actual number.
Withdrawing and using MediSave
For most approved treatments, you (or the hospital, on your behalf) submit a MediSave claim directly — many hospitals in Singapore handle this automatically as part of billing, deducting the claimable portion from your MediSave balance so you only pay the remainder out of pocket or through insurance.
There are also withdrawal limits for certain types of claims — for example, daily or per-admission caps on hospitalisation withdrawals — designed to keep the scheme sustainable and prevent a single member’s account from being drawn down excessively fast. These caps are set by CPF/MOH and reviewed periodically.
How MediSave fits into the bigger CPF and healthcare picture
It helps to think of Singapore’s healthcare financing as layered, with MediSave as one layer among several:
- MediSave — your personal medical savings, funded through CPF contributions.
- MediShield Life — basic catastrophic hospitalisation insurance, universal and compulsory, premiums typically paid via MediSave.
- Integrated Shield Plans — optional private insurer add-ons for higher coverage tiers (private hospital wards, higher claim limits), premiums partly payable via MediSave.
- MediFund — a safety-net fund for Singaporeans who, even after MediSave and insurance, can’t afford their remaining medical bills.
MediSave sits at the base of that stack. It’s not meant to replace insurance — MediShield Life and Integrated Shield Plans exist precisely because a single large hospitalisation could otherwise wipe out a MediSave balance built up over years. The two are meant to work together, not as substitutes for each other.
For more on how MediSave fits into your overall CPF and retirement savings, see our CPF & Retirement Savings hub.
The bottom line
MediSave is a mandatory personal healthcare savings account within CPF, funded automatically through your CPF contributions (and compulsorily for the self-employed above a threshold), used for a defined set of approved medical expenses, capped at the Basic Healthcare Sum, and designed to work alongside — not instead of — MediShield Life and other insurance layers. For the current BHS figure, contribution allocation percentages, or whether a specific bill is claimable, the CPF Board and Ministry of Health websites are the definitive sources.